He would never know what made him walk away from his life that night, leaving the safety of his car. He was on his way to grab some dinner from a fast-food drive-thru when, stopped at a red light, he just got out of his car. Left the door standing wide open. He walked off into the rainy night, the emergency brake holding his sensible, four-door sedan still on the wet asphalt.
Police would later describe his appearance, his leather jacket, his battered brown loafers. They could not have known that he no longer resembled his old self. The transformation had been phenomenal, perhaps beyond the bounds of science.
He’d saved two religious missionaries that night, though not by rational choice. Driving, he had seen them in the shadow, silhouetted by street lamps. They were breaking the law, the one the new administration had come up with.
Approved National Christian Religious Practices, passed by that rubber-stamp Congress, had outlawed those missionaries a few years before. Penalties were harsh, and yet the two young men were there in the rain, braving punishment. He saw determination and peace in their eyes as his headlights swung over them.
They disappeared into the night, raindrops pattering.
Years later he would think that he saw something in his rearview mirror, out of his peripheral vision.
Things that had been rumored for several years, but never taken seriously by sensible adults. Such things were fairy tales or the creations of Hollywood, or what was once Hollywood before the New Government had censored it all. Video games, too. Silver bullets, he recalled thinking before he stopped the car at that fateful red light. Silver bullets.
What he may have seen he didn’t know, but he wanted, needed, to find out. Maybe he had jumped out of his car for a look because the streets were barren. Maybe he thought he’d catch a glimpse and return to the ssafety of his cushioned bucket seat. Maybe he was trying to burn a few Calories before ingesting a large soda along with a bacon-laden chicken sandwich.
But that had not happened. He had, against his better judgment, grabbed his Police Department Reserve handgun from under his seat, snatched his reservist badge from the glove compartment, and lost track of himself.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Perhaps he had grown dissatisfied with his life, and that is why he had kept on moving even when it was clear that the thing he had seen in the mirror would not be spotted quickly. He was an intelligent, responsible man, not one to leave his car idling at an intersection. He was not one to abuse his Reserve Officer status, the punishment for which could be severe.
Perhaps he wanted an escape from his life as an overworked high school department chair, saddled by Department of Learning and Socialization mandates and new teachers who were, more and more often, brainwashed graduate of the State universities. Perhaps he hated that his Reserve Officer duties, which had seemed so noble and prestigious years earlier, had since devolved into crowd control at hunger protests. That and evictions of people from apartment blocks.
“We found love in a hopeless place,” he had been murmuring, singing along with the old song on the radio, when he’d seen the light go red and braked slowly.
Now he was loping along the sidewalk and sprinting from shadow to shadow through damp front lawns, feeling the water creep into his shoes as the pistol butt slowly warmed in his white-knuckle grip.
He remembered.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Werewolves,” the old man had been gasping, his blood all over the goddam place. A squadron of police stood around, waiting for the paramedics. They would arrive far too late to save the gray-haired fellow, the ambulance driver claiming to have been slowed by several dark SUVs driving abreast in all lanes.
“Assholes wouldn’t let me through,” he had said, though there was fear rather than anger in his voice. One of the older paramedics, a bearded guy, had glared at him and they had later argued in hushed tones as they loaded the medical equipment back into their vehicle. “Tinted windows,” the driver had hissed, ending the heated discussion.
It was his first murder case as a Reserve Officer. He’d been selected for Investigations due to his education and knowledge of psychology, and he had arrived at the house with his black uniform freshly pressed and his magnetic roof light flashing urgently. Back then he thought he had been helping.
He had recorded the dying man’s last words. Within minutes, as the cops stood around hopelessly, other officers, unknown to them, arrived. Their uniforms said local PD, but their demeanor and mannerisms said otherwise. Captain Pylatt, the top-ranking officer on duty, was with them and said they were new transfers.
“We’ll take over from here,” one of them, wearing Sergeant’s stripes, said. They had gone over to the dying man, crudely bandaged by the first on-scene officers, and began asking calm, almost whispered questions.
But he han’t turned off his recorder, and collected it later from where it had been set on the man’s coffee table.
He hadn’t gone upstairs with the other officers to see the bodies of the wife and the four other people, perhaps the couples’ children. He hadn’t gone to see the body of the kid, either.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They had asked him for his recorder later, for their investigative records. He had been terrified for weeks after handing it over to Captain Pylatt, afraid that they would see that he had cut eleven minutes of recording out.
He had put the last eleven minutes of the recording on his laptop. Surely the tech guys could tell, right? They could tell that the recorder had had some of its recordings cut-and-pasted elsewhere?
After weeks he began to feel better – they obviously hadn’t known.
He listened to the eleven minutes one night alone, while drunk. He couldn’t find the courage to do it otherwise. Listening to the recording of the “transfer” officers when he wasn’t supposed to could be considered something like treason under the New Government, especially if the transfer officers were actually Secret Police.
They talk had been nonsensical, something about a Werewolf. How it had been summoned because the old man wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Maybe it would’ve scared him to death if he hadn’t gone all bugshit crazy instead,” one of the transfer cops had said. “Who knew the geezer would’ve pulled a motherfucking gun? Those were supposed to have been collected two years ago.”
At the end of the recording one of the transfer cops asked what the thing on the coffee table was.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He rounded a corner and saw the thing he sought – a large human-esque figure. Dark hair.
Trailing the missionaries.
The man – he assumed it was a man – was huge, at least six-five and with a hulking figure. Fur coat, dark brown or grey, with black spots. Wolf?
Can’t be a fuckin’ Werewolf – it’s wearing pants and boots! he thought, watching it move silently.
The two missionaries, in their black suits, turned and saw the man/thing through the rain, and its face scared them. They yelled and ran.
The man/thing began to chase them, and he had never seen something so big move so fast and gracefully. He didn’t think, just reacted. Brought his gun up, clasped in both hands, finger on the trigger.
“Police! Freeze!”
The man/thing stopped, turned. The laser dot swept to the center of its chest.
Red eyes and fangs. He fired thrice, two holes opening up in its chest.
The two missionaries were gone, having fled into the shadows. They hadn’t been evading the Government this long without being good at hiding.
Man/thing charging now, so he fired the rest of his bullets. Man/thing fell, did not get up.
Lights coming on inside the houses and he could hear yelling voices inside. People would be calling the police.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He stole the old Ford Expedition from in front of the townhouse, seeing the keys reflecting in the ignition from the light of a street lamp. The SUV was clearly someone’s hunting truck, and they’d left the keys in it.
Maybe if he hadn’t seen the keys he would’ve played it straight, identifying himself as an officer and calling his superiors on his phone, saying he had stopped an assault-in-progress.
But the thing with the red eyes and fangs stopped him. It wasn’t right. Not normal, inhuman.
He had stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have. He knew, in the pit of his stomach, that this would not end well.
He saw the keys in the ignition of the big ol’ Ford and decided to drag the man/thing over to it. Hurrying, he kicked it to make sure it was dead. Eyes closed and not moving, at least.
Grabbed it by the lapels of the fur coat – looked like grey wolf – and dragged it over the grass and asphalt to the car, his back and thighs aching from the weight.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
At an abandoned gas station with working lights he checked the body. False teeth – fangs that slipped over normal human teeth. Colored contact lenses. Gloves and a coat of wolf hide. Three knives and two pistols secured to the man’s torso.
Abnormal amount of hair, both on face and body. Hypertrichosis.
Finally, he found a U.S. Secret Police identity badge and a packet of four small syringers. A phone with six unanswered messages.
Report status. Targets eliminated? Report status now.
As if in a dream, he opened the phone to reveal its keyboard and responded to the texts.
Targets eliminated.
He injected himself with two syringes. He didn’t know why.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The rumors had started years ago, of Werewolves and vampires being real. Supernatural beings who punished those against the Church.
He had found a Werewolf, and it was a man.
The syringes had been obviously been necessary to keep the man in his fearsome state. He felt the transformations within a few days of being on the lam.
He became voraciously hungry, devouring any food he came across. Within weeks he was substantially taller and stronger, his muscles thrumming with energy. Hair grew, and he became bearded. He could hear a pin drop.
The U.S. Secret Police had obviously turned off that phone as soon as they realized it wasn’t their man who had sent that last text, but not soon enough.
He’d found enough information on the phone in those 44 minutes to know things, to have a plan.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Three days later a newspaper in North Carolina had the headline Werewolf Man Killed by Mystery Vigilante While Attacking Family in Terrifying Home Invasion
Other headlines followed.
Family Attacked by “Werewolf-Man” Was Vocal Critic of Government-Approved Religious Law
Home Invader Described by Police as Man With Hypertrichosis
Vigilante Sought for Questioning by Authorities
Public Furor Over “Werewolf” Attacker Reaches Fever Pitch in Several Cities
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Days later, as people began defiantly demanding to see the photos and autopsy report for the “Werewolf-man” home invade in North Carolina, a cell phone was dropped off at a large national newspaper office in New York City by a tall, broad-shouldered man with piercing eyes and a thick blond beard.
“This might help explain the recent rash of thefts of pharmaceuticals at military and Government medical installations” read the note affixed to the shiny metal device.
The phone, considered a ruse, was passed to a junior editor. Over his lunch, bored, he flipped it open and found it still with battery life.
A small sticky note was adhered to the keypad.
Check photos and texts.
The junior editor did, and his eyes grew wide. “Holy Christ,” he whispered. He began, against his better judgment, writing the texts he found into a word processing program, which he transferred to a flash drive.
The last text read: Thank you for reading these. Be not afraid, for though they may try to stop you they will not succeed. I am there.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Watching through a skylight atop the newspaper office, a bearded man injected himself with a syringe from a battered metal case reading USSP Property – Classified Top Secret.
He wore a Reserve Police Officer standard-issue pistol in a leather shoulder holster and a battered leather jacket, crudely altered to accommodate a massive torso and longer arms, fit tightly around his shoulders. A laminated ID card, hanging around his neck from a purple lanyard, read Social Studies Department Head in fading letters.
He watched and waited.